AUTHOR Paul Peacock with daughter Rebecca, who illustrated the new biography.

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LIFE IS good for local author Paul Peacock as his new novel on the late environmentalist John Seymour is published on Monday.

Guardian gardening correspondent Paul Peacock, aged 47, of Baytree Lane, was asked back in April to write a book on Mr Seymour, author of the bestselling Complete Guide To Self-Sufficiency and the inspiration for television series The Good Life.

Fittingly entitled 'A Good Life', the book is a real family affair as Paul's talented artist daughter, 22-year-old Rebecca, has penned the illustrations that adorn the first page of each chapter.

The text charts the protagonist's early childhood dreams of being a cowboy, his life growing up in Africa, his early farming experiences and the gradual formulation of his environmental philosophies.

It also details Mr Seymour's later years, when he moved to Ireland and, despite being in his eighties, argued passionately and eloquently against the rise of genetically modified crops in the Arthurstown Monsanto Trials.

During his research Paul visited Mr Seymour's first wife and his daughter at his Pembrokeshire farm, and also went to Ireland to visit Angela Ashe, who Mr Seymour lived with alongside her husband William Sutherland in a remote smallholding in Killowen.

Father-of-three Paul, who lives on Grimshaw Lane, said: "He was an amazing guy. He wrote over 40 books in his life, and the Complete Guide to Self Suffiency sold over two million.

"He would go into a pub and have a tumbler full of whisky, saying it was one for the road. But then he would have to have another because, as he said, a bird never flew with just the one wing."

But rather than putting his feet up now the book's finished, the former teacher has already started work on his next biography, which is due to be finished by January.

The new book is to focus on author and television presenter Jack Hargreaves, who had a strong interest in nature and agriculture but is perhaps best known for his appearance alongside Carol Vorderman in the children's question-and-answer programme How.

Copies of 'A Good Life' can currently be ordered from WH Smith in Middleton, priced £10.